Crimson Rosella - my little bird of hope for 2012

Happy New Year! あけましておめでとう～

New Year's Postcard by Kata Kata, a couple working in Katazome in Tokyo http://blog.kata-kata04.com/

I am coming up to the halfway mark of my program as a research student here in Kyoto. I've been attempting to sum up all of the interesting little things I've found in books and articles and galleries into some kind of report so I can refocus my energies for the new school year starting in April.

One big "step backwards" for my research proposal last year was discovering that what I had thought were Australian parrots and birds in Japanese 18th and 19th century artworks were probably..most-likely...actually, closely related species from neighbouring Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and other islands. Having digested this, I found a way to 're-jig' my initial proposal so that it still fits the way I want (something along the lines of "Exotic foreign birds in Edo period Japanese art" as opposed to "Australian birds in Japanese Edo-period Art").

pretty but unfortunately South East Asian Parrots...

Still, I've still been hesitant to flatly claim none of the birds in these artworks are from Australia. The Dutch had very early (from about 1606) and on-going connections to Australia via their trading posts in Java and south-east Asia. Slightly later in the 1700's, British explorers and ships made their way to the great southern land too, stopping off in...Java (!) and various South Pacific and Asian locations. To my mind, there's a window there where goods from Australia could have found their way to Japan via South-east Asia. Perhaps.

One reason for me to cling to this hope is the humble Crimson Rosella. I've been through lists of parrots that were found in Edo Japan and found most of those species can be found in Indonesia as well as sometimes North Australia. However there is one species that is only found in Australia, the Crimson Rosella. Its Japanese name (アカクサインコ) is not so easily confused as the many names for varieties of lorikeets and cockatoos that occur in both Indonesia and Australia. Visually too, it's quite distinct from other species. Here is one artwork that has to be a Crimson Rosella.

This little guy arrived in Japan on a Dutch boat in 1823, relatively late.

I read today (in an article by Naohide Osono outlining exotic foreign animals brought into Japan pre 1868) that Crimson Rosella(s?) also arrived in Japan 1814. Oh the plot thickens..

Anyway, the reason you set out to research something is to really get to the bottom of it; you can't predict the conclusion you will come too. I have another year to find out all I can and keep making artwork at the same time.

New Works! 完成したばかりの作品

Last week I finally finished two of my initial 'trial' artworks. They've been a way to get back into the swing of Katazome again but I also wanted to try out a few new techniques, including coloured resist paste and using a paper cone (づつ) to apply resist paste. Of course, they are also depicting Australian birds, in keeping with my research here in Kyoto.

First up is a linen Noren curtain dyed using Katazome technique. It shows the Kanji for Australia, "Go" 豪 and Australian flora and fauna.

「豪」'Australia'. Linen Noren. Katazome. 2011

Detail of Wattle.

Close up of my Crimson Rosella

 Second is this piece depicting a male King Parrot and Blackwood Wattle. This piece incorporates both katazome (resist paste applied with a stencil) and tzutsugaki (resiste paste applied with paper cone). I'm really happy with how this combination turned out.

King Parrot & Blackwood Wattle. Katazome and Hand-drawn resist technique on cotton. 2011

You can see the white lines which is where resist paste was applied with the cone. It gives a very different, drawing-like feel compared to stencil resist.

I have two more bird pieces *THIS* close to being finished. Once those are complete, I'd like to see what's been most sucessful in terms of technique and move on to making one or two much larger pieces.

Cut & Paste 型彫り＆糊置き

This week at Kyoto Seika I've been cutting and pasting.
To be more precise, I've been cutting stencils and resist pasting them onto cotton and silk fabrics!

I came up with 3 designs to use for trial artworks.

The first one I am using to dye some noren (narrow width split curtain) for the entrance to my bedroom. The design is based on katazome works by Serizawa Keisuke (one of my katazome heroes) where he takes a singular Kanji (chinese character) and surrounds it with design elements. For example:

Serizawa Keisuke,  「夏の字」 Kanji for Summer. Katazome on tsumugi silk. 1954

Serizawa Keisuke, 「飛の字」Kanji for "Fly". Katazome on linen. circa 1961

I chose to use the Kanji which is used to represent Australia, 豪 which reads as "Go" (you can maybe translate it as 'splendid' or 'grand').

And printed with resist paste onto linen.



Here it is in it's stencil format...





Here are some images of my other two designs in progress...

Crimson Rosella

Getting ready to print the King Parrot design

Close-up of King Parrot's face after I had added some extra details...

The next step will be to apply a soybean mixture that helps stop the dyes bleeding and then I can start dyeing!

Yuzen Dyeing 友禅体験

It's the middle of summer here in Kyoto now and the rainy season has finally broken to leave us with hot hot summer weather! I'm nearly on summer holidays!
This past semester I was lucky enough to join in on a special class at Kyoto Seika University in Yu-zen dyeing (友禅). Yu-zen is the traditional method used to dye spectacular kimono.

For this class we dyed a piece of silk fabric about 1metre by 80cm. The other students in the class were second years in the Textiles department so they were forced to produce a design on the theme of self portrait. (ergh how second year Art-school is that!) Being a free-wheeling research student (!) I was allowed to create my own design as I wished. I chose to use the image of an Australian Rosella.

Here are some photos and explanations of the process.

My design in progress

We used this dark blue ink to paint the design onto our fabric

...like so

design all painted on the silk

Then you take this tube made of a reinforced Japanese paper that has a metal tip attached to the end. You fill it with a resist paste made of rice flour and rice bran. It looks like melty peanut butter.

...pipe the resist paste onto the fabric, a la cake decorating, following the blue design.

Paste applied to entire design and has dried. Ready to dye!

In progress. Its really just like painting in between the lines using a watercolour brush and chemical dyestuffs.

Blossom section. You can see the brown paste lines, which will later be washed off to reveal the white fabric underneath.

Dyed, steamed and washed! Ta-da! But not done yet...

so that I can dye the background, the design gets covered up again with resist paste and dried.

Then I dye with purple over the whole fabric. Steam and wash it all over again and...

Finished!!

 Was a very interesting process to experience. Of course, it was time consuming. But what Japanese technique isn't? In future I'm hoping to combine yu-zen with katazome resist techniques that I've previously studied. I finished this piece just in time for a small exhibition with the other research and exchange students currently studying at Kyoto Seika University. The exhibition was a great success and lots of people came to see it which was lovely. Heres a few photos of the exhibition.

New Discoveries - There's Cockatoos in Indonesia?!

Its been a long time between posts.
I am now very lucky to be in Kyoto, as a Research Student on a Japanese government scholarship. (!!)
I'll be here for two years, studying Katazome and Art history. As a means to getting this scholarship, I had to submit a convincing research proposal. My initial propsal was to research the depiction of Australian Birds in Japanese Art.

In previous posts you can see some examples of these artworks, showing cockatoos and parrots in ink scrolls and paintings from the early 1800's.

NEWSFLASH! I may have to slightly rethink my research. Let me explain why.

Yes its true there are some really exciting and interesting artworks in Japanese art and textiles which depict Cockatoos, parrots and exotic foreign birds. My initial suspicion was that these birds were brought to Japan by Dutch traders. So far, this seems true.

The Dutch were (apart from a small community of Chinese) the only foreigners permitted to trade with Japan during its self-imposed "closed country" period in the 1700 and 1800's. From what I have read so far, the Dutch brought new and strange objects to Japan to trade but also brought exotic birds and animals at the request of the Shogun and as gifts. Including.....cockatoos I suspect.

During this period that the Dutch were trading with Japan, they operated a Colony out of Java (or "Batavia"). From there they operated some of their business as the Dutch East India Trading Company. And guess what they have in Indonesia? Parrots! Not only parrots, Cockatoos!! Here we are seeing the white cockatoo as a symbol of the wide brown land but in fact there are a whole lot of different varieties of Cockatoos and many of them are found across the Indonesian islands, New Guinea and neighbouring islands.

Having "discovered" this, I have looked back at the Japanese artworks that first spurred my initial research ideas. Sure enough, they are varieties of Cockatoos found in Indonesia. Check it out:

Parrots and Pine Branch - A fairly famous painting by Ito Jakuchu - early 1800's I think

Probably that's this guy on the right, "Cacatua Alba" or White Cockatoo. Found not in Australia but on Islands at the northern tip of Indonesia.

The green parrot in the top left of Jakuchu's painting is probably the male green Eclectus Parrot. I already thought this but now I know that the Eclectus parrot is found across Indonesia, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and ALSO the very northern tip of AUSTRALIA!

How about these paintings?



Not sure, but they could be the one in the middle, "Amboina King Parrot" found... you guessed it northern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomons...


Despite these slightly disappointing revelations, there are still artworks that have to be Australian birds. Well at least, I'm not yet convinced otherwise. For example, the print below looks like a Crimson Rosella to me (an ugly one!!!), and they definitely don't occur in Indonesia.



Crimson Rosella (Centre)

So what does all this mean? Well, my observation of exotic birds in Japanese art still stands true but the bird's homelands still needs some more research. Certainly, it makes sense that the Dutch would have taken birds from their colony of "Batavia" and surrounds to Japan. I wonder if whether later in the 1800's any Australian birds were exported directly from Australia? Apparently budgerigars (native to central Australia) were first taken to England in 1840 by John Gould so its possible this kind of export took place to Asia as well. There's alot more to look into, and this is just the first step.